Monday, January 9, 2012

Why even think about empires? We live in a world of nation-states — over 200 of
them, each with their seat in the UN, their flag, postage stamps and
governmental institutions. Yet the nation-state is an ideal of recent
origin and uncertain future and, for many, devastating consequences.

It is not a question of sinking into imperial nostalgia: sentimental
evocations of the British Raj or French Indochina have nothing to offer
to our present political thinking. Similarly, imperial name-calling —
invoking “empire” or “colonialism” to discredit US, French or other
interventions — cannot help us analyse or improve today’s world.

An
exploration of the histories of empires, old and new, can expand our
understanding of how the world came to be what it is, and the
organisation of political power in the past, the present and even the
future.

Over a very long time, the practices and interactions of empires
configured the contexts in which people acted and thought. Examining the
trajectories of empires — their creations, conflicts, rivalries,
successes and failures — reminds us of something we have forgotten: that
sovereignty in the past, and in many areas today, is complex, divided,
layered and configured on a variety of founding principles and
practices.

Empire has existed in relation to — and often in tension with — other
forms of connection over space; empires facilitated and obstructed
movements of goods, capital, people and ideas. Empire building was
almost always a violent process, and conquest was often followed by
exploitation, if not forced acculturation and humiliation. Empires
constructed powerful political formations, and also left trails of human
suffering. However, the national idea, developed in imperial contexts,
has not proved effective, to judge by the unresolved conflicts in the
Middle East and Africa.

We live with the consequences of these uneven and broken paths out of
empire, the fiction of sovereign equivalence and the reality of
inequality within and among states.

Thinking about empire does not mean resurrecting vanished worlds. It
allows us rather to consider the multiplicity of forms in which power is
exercised across space. If we can avoid thinking of history as an
inexorable transition from empire to nation-state, perhaps we can think
about the future more expansively. Can we imagine forms of sovereignty
that are better able to address a world marked by inequality and
diversity?

wHoA!

h0t!

~hEy Y"all! DoN"t MiSs GsGf~!

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